It is September 25th, 2018. The Catholic Church in Germany is at a turning point.

The German bishops meet in Fulda for their autumn plenary assembly.

The devastating results of the abuse study of the German Bishops' Conference have just been presented.

Its visibly shaken chairman, Reinhard Cardinal Marx, says: “I am ashamed of the trust that has been destroyed;

for the crimes committed to people by Church officials;

and I feel ashamed that many people look the other way, who refused to admit what happened and who did not care about the victims. "

Thomas Jansen

Editor in politics.

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      A journalist then asks the Archbishop of Munich and Freising what the personnel consequences for those who have been responsible for decades as personnel managers, vicars general and other assignments would be.

      In politics, personnel consequences would now be due.

      And Marx has been bishop for 16 years.

      The chairman gave an evasive answer.

      “As far as my responsibility is concerned, we have to look at it,” he says.

      A journalist asks whether no one from the circle of bishops is thinking of resigning because he has charged “personal guilt” on himself.

      Marx answers: no.

      Two and a half years later, Marx has now offered Pope Francis his resignation.

      In the aftermath, he “felt more and more that this question cannot simply be pushed aside,” he wrote in a personal statement on Friday.

      The step came as a surprise to outsiders.

      For months now, Archbishop Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki of Cologne and Archbishop of Hamburg Stefan Heße have been at the center of the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in Germany.

      The latter had also offered the Pope his resignation in March after the Cologne abuse report was presented, but Francis has only ordered him to take a break for the time being.

      According to reports, however, Marx had been thinking about this for several months.

      "Sexual abuse catastrophe"

      The term “personal guilt” does not appear in Marx's letter to the Pope or in his declaration. He speaks of “personal responsibility” and “shared responsibility”. He wants to share responsibility "for the catastrophe of sexual abuse by officials of the church in the past decades", it says in it. The investigations and reports of the past ten years had consistently shown him that there had been “a lot of personal failure and administrative errors”, but “also institutional or systemic failure”, according to Marx. He does not go directly into the personal allegations in dealing with sexual abuse with which Marx was confronted at the end of April this year in a report in the Zeit supplement Christ & Welt. Regarding the genesis of his decision, however, his declaration states:"Events and discussions of the last few weeks only play a subordinate role."